Meet Arizona Agriculture's Ag Fraternity: Alpha Gamma Rho
Published
1/20/2015
Justen Ollendick, Arizona Farm Bureau Intern: Alpha Gamma Rho Alpha Pi is the premier professional fraternity associated with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Arizona. It dawned on me that 90% of the Alpha Gamma Rho members were also Arizona Farm Bureau members, and so were their families! How neat to see these two organizations come together to promote Arizona agriculture.
An interview with Jared Biciolis, President of AGR at the University of Arizona - Tucson
Give me the background of Alpha Gamma Rho: Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity is the social/professional agriculture fraternity at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. Alpha Gamma Rho (AGR)
Jared Biciolis is the current President of AGR at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
What are some of the different advantages to joining Alpha Gamma Rho? Something that I really want to emphasize and that makes Alpha Gamma Rho so much different than other fraternities or other groups that you can join is that we are strictly a social/professional fraternity. That term is very rare to find in the Greek life. The social side is everything you would expect from a fraternity: we own our own fraternity house on Greek row in Tucson that members are encouraged to live in, we have social events with other frats and sororities on campus that help strengthen a person’s social skills and gives them college experience of networking. The counterpart to AGR is the professional side, which is extremely rare to find in most fraternities or sororities. Since Alpha Gamma Rho - UA is connected with Arizona agriculture, we get the opportunity to give back to the agriculture community and give our members opportunities and experiences that prepare them for a career in the agriculture field.
Do we have an overlap in membership between members of Arizona Young Farmers and Ranchers (YF&R) and Alpha Gamma Rho (AGR)? The YF&R program, especially the collegiate program down here in Tucson is run for the most part by AGR members. The current chapter president is an Alpha Gamma Rho brother, the past two chairs as well. I think that speaks to a great level as we are all in the same “ag family” so to speak. We have a great mesh together.
Membership in AGR continues to grow as many young men pursuing agriculture degrees see a fit.
Where do you see AGR going in the next five to ten years? The nice thing is we have the best growth as a fraternity, most recently. In the last two
How does AGR connect to farm bureau? We are the future farm bureau members, if we aren’t already members, we are the future leaders. We just finished our first annual professional development tours. We visited twelve operations in just three days, talked to well over twenty farmers/ranchers who
Editor’s note: Look for upcoming Meet Arizona Agriculture Articles featuring members dually enrolled in Arizona Farm Bureau and Alpha Gamma Rho memberships and their families. You’ll recognize quite a few of them!